Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) | Hansard source

I thank Senator Roberts for his question. In the last budget we did take some steps to remove the barriers to foreign investment in the new bill to rent to housing, to try and boost supplies of rentals. While the investment in building new housing is welcome, foreign ownership of existing housing is generally prohibited. While in some circumstances foreign residents can purchase a home while they are living in Australia, they are required to sell or rent it when they leave, and a vacancy tax applies to any properties left vacant. As we promised in the lead-up to the last election, we have doubled the penalty for breaches of our foreign investment rules from 1 January this year.